Hey, Shake Your Parsnips!
Pass the biscuits...
(Lovely Guernsey)
Hey, it’s me, and there is a lot going on as I hurtle at warp speed toward the March 19th first anniversary of my 5 a.m. Stories.
Lots of folks didn’t think I’d make it a whole year – my two dogs and three cats, for example. No help at all.
Oh, and the Baroness, the original occupant of our house, whom you met in my first 5 a.m. Story. She really thought my stories would crash on takeoff, and she even tried to have the locks to the house changed.
And yet, here we are. I just got my 300th subscriber – sure, subscriptions are free, but if you multiply that times a large enough volume, well, you do the math. I’m plowing it all back into the product, baby!
My Substack publishers have just informed me I now have subscribers in EIGHTEEN countries, with a brand-new reader in Guernsey!
Guernsey is a self-governing island in the English Channel. They speak Guernésiais, and since someone there is now reading my stuff, I’ve been trying to learn their language as a courtesy.
“Passe mé les galaettes si t'pllaît.”
That means, “Please pass me the biscuits,” which as you know is my fave sentence in English.
I’m just getting started on studying the lingo, which has its own quirks. For instance, a very common phrase is, “Rémouque ta pauneis!” The command literally means “Shake your parsnips,” but they use it when they want to say, “Hurry up!”
Anyhow, I’m in love with Guernsey, and I’m thinking of moving my 5 a.m. Stories operation there if I can get my staff - especially my all-important story editors - to uproot their families in Chicago, Santa Fe and Toronto. Of course, all of you are welcome to visit us, once we find the biscuits.
(Guernsey coat-of-arms)
I hope all of you are busy planning for the big March 19 anniversary celebration, and you can help by sending out story links to annoy your friends. As I said in my very first post, you should never be afraid to bother others with these stories. That’s what they’re here for!
Please hurry up, dear friends, those parsnips aren’t going to shake themselves!
When do we move?
When I was little, in the small town of Batesville , Indiana (just down I-74 from Indy) there was a small farm adjacent to our neighborhood that had 5 or 6 Guernsey Cows. We would climb on the wood fence/gate and some of them would amble over because they knew we would feed them nice green grass that we pulled out of the adjacent neighbors yard. It became a summer activity when we couldn't think of anything else to do and the city pool was closed (whenever it went below 70 degrees). The temptation for us kids was to climb over the fence and pet and feed these beautiful but mammoth beasts (compared to us). They looked very petable (is that a word). with their big eyes and eye lashes. However, there was one (bull or cow)???) that didn't like our invading its field and charged us aggressively. We ( 3-4 of us) raced to the fence and we set new fence climbing records. We never told our parents of our near death experience for fear of being banned from feeding the nice cows. So that was my childhood experience with Guernsey Cows. They were mostly nice. By the way we rotated our grass pulling so we didn't create a bald spot in the neighbors yard.